


Booze Run

by Princessfbi



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Backstory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, TV show and book combination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:34:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9919037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princessfbi/pseuds/Princessfbi
Summary: Eliot gets sent on a booze run and runs into someone he isn't sure he can necessarily deal with right now.I have three older brothers. Magnificent physical specimens--- kind-hearted, thick-necked, three-sport athletes who drink Schlitz and feel sorry for me. --- Lev Grossman, Chapter: Eliot





	

* * *

_I have three older brothers. Magnificent physical specimens--- kind-hearted, thick-necked, three-sport athletes who drink Schlitz and feel sorry for me. --- Lev Grossman, Chapter: Eliot_

Booze runs shouldn’t be classified as an errand...

Per se...

Maybe it was the mandatory chore quality of it that had everyone practically running to the edges of the wards to get out of their turn. Or maybe it involved going into town where the mundane and oblivious lived and once you were in the Brakebills bubble it didn’t take too long to become unaccustomed with knowing how to deal with the ignorant again.

Eliot had been too drunk and too insensible to really care and graciously agreed to do it. That and Margo had told him in no uncertain terms that since he had dried them out of every bottle of scotch that had been left, it was his turn to do the run. Whatever.

Besides, that meant he got to pick out his own special stash. Everyone in the cottage contributed to the Stash Jar and didn’t really care what it was spent on. It was common knowledge that the runner got to pick whatever they wanted. It was easier than trying to take special orders. This was the reason why Griselle was not allowed to go on booze runs anymore.

And anyway Eliot was in the mood for some cognac.

If he could get his hands on something stronger then even better.

People were still looking at him like he… well like he killed someone. Can’t say he really blames them. It took all of a day for word to get out that Eliot had snapped Mike’s neck like a twig.

The screw up Physical kid who magic came easy to had murdered someone. Not just someone. Someone he had screwed and brought into the bubble of Brakebills.

Sure, Margo had hissed and growled at anyone who bothered to say any of that out loud but it didn’t matter. Eliot knew what he had done. And now? Now, he needed to wash out that stain on his soul with as much alcohol as he could possibly get. And when that stain returned he could just medicate like all the other sad losers in the world. 

Eliot stood out in the dull, muted liquor store, searching for the nice vermouth that Margo always loved. He stood out because of his manner and no matter how defeated he felt, even the peasants could see that Eliot was something more. He was tall and commanding and so perfectly comfortable in the world around him that no one could say otherwise.

Normally people left him alone when he went on booze runs.

“Eliot?”

Something stirred inside Eliot at the sound of his name from one of the few people who could command such a reaction. A little boy who ate his feelings uncurled from the hay stack, his limbs sore and numb from the petrified rigidness in his shoulders, too afraid that his bullies were going to be waiting for him.

But it didn’t matter because no one would mess with him if he hid in the shadow one of his older brothers always cast.

It couldn’t be. That world was so separated from Eliot at this point that there was no way. And still, his heart lurched against his chest.

When he turned around, his heart did it again because there standing in the flimsy aisle and holding a cheap bottle of wine that looked fancier than it would taste, was Spencer.

Spencer, the third Waugh son. Spencer, who was always pale regardless of how many hours he spent in the sun. Spencer, who was always able to find Eliot when he hid in trees. Spencer, who slapped him on the back when Eliot gained an inch in height over him.

“Oh my God.” Spencer abandoned his wine and strode forward before Eliot could run. “I can’t believe it’s you. I can’t---“

His large broad hands hovered over Eliot without actually touching him, like he didn’t know where to put them.

“Hi,” Eliot stumbled over because what else was he suppose to say? “What are you doing here?”

“I… I uh…” Spencer didn’t seem to know what his thoughts were doing because he tried to blink away from staring at Eliot but it wasn’t working. “My girlfriend and I were… We’re uh going… we’re taking a road trip to Maine. I can’t believe… how are you doing?”

“I’m…fine.” He could’ve lied but some reason, the thought of lying to Spencer sent Eliot’s stomach tumbling to his shoes. So he settled on what everyone else was telling him instead. 

If Spencer noticed the half truth he didn't indicate. 

“Can I hug you?” It would’ve been so easy. Eliot would just have to magic his fingers and get the hell out of there before Spencer lost time in his memory. He wouldn’t remember seeing Eliot at all. Eliot could return to Brakebills, send someone else for booze, and then promptly drink himself into oblivion with Spencer on his way to Maine.  So easy.

“Sure,” Eliot said anyways.

He barely got the word out before Spencer was wrapping strong arms around Eliot. His broad chest and large hands consumed Eliot’s lanky frame. The hug was rough, his brothers didn’t know any other way, but all encompassing and Eliot could only stand to be stock still for about thirty seconds. His will left him and Eliot was tucking his arms around Spencer as well and dropping his head onto his solid shoulder.

Spencer smelled like gasoline and leather and cinnamon. Eliot shook with longing and Spencer’s hold tightened in response. 

“Hey, are you… What’s wrong?” Spencer asked and Eliot let out a shaky sob into his neck. When had he started crying?

Spencer’s whole body somehow enveloped Eliot and he felt like a little kid again which was pathetic on even the most basic levels. But Spencer felt, smelled, safe. The feeling of Spencer overwhelmed the memory of Mike’s hands, Mike’s lips, Mike’s tongue that both caressed and violated Eliot’s mind. Spencer overshadowed the mortifying humiliation that came with being used and the wailing grief at losing someone who Eliot had opened up to for the first time in a long time.

“It’s ok. Hey, it’s ok.” Spencer murmured along with other nonsensical reassurings.

“It’s not.” Eliot shuddered and Spencer’s strong hands curled around him.

* * *

Once Eliot had calmed down enough, he was quick to shove his emotions back into the tight clutches of his mind. God, how could he have been so pathetic? It’d been five years since he’d seen his brother. Five years since he started to reinvent himself. Five _years_ since he didn’t need anyone except maybe Margo. Yet, somehow it’d taken all of five _seconds_ for him to crumble into the baby brother Spencer once knew. The baby that couldn’t do anything the way he was suppose to. The baby that didn’t come out right as his charming father had stated over and over again.

Spencer had weaseled Eliot into an old vinyl booth in the back corner of a diner and bar. Spencer always knew how Eliot both thrived and shied away from people. When he feelings would start to become too much, when they felt like they were going to ooze out of the tight leash he’d put around them, Spencer always knew a quiet place to take him.

And then the adult, jaded voice in Eliot’s head couldn’t help but taste the resentment at the back of his throat. Because, when his parents had started to suspect that there wasn’t something so clean and straight cut with their son, how much of it was Spencer trying to help and Spencer trying to hide him away.

“Here,” Spencer said, sliding a mug of coffee against the table over to Eliot. “Drink this. You look like you could use it.”

“Always were great with the compliments weren’t you, Spence.” He’d meant to sound cold but his eyes still felt hot from his tears. He curled his hands around the ceramic and absorbed the heat. He didn’t drink it.

A heavy silence settled over the two like a humid fog. If Eliot had been sitting beside Ian, his second oldest brother would’ve been fidgeting with the need to do anything to relieve the tension. Arlan would’ve sighed like a man who didn’t want to be a parent but acted like a father no one asked for anyway. But not Spencer. Spencer shared the controlled stubbornness with Eliot along with their magnificent bone structure.

“How’s Mom?” Eliot drawled out because he honestly just wanted to get this all over with. Spencer took a sip coffee and winced, reaching over for the sugar and pouring in an unhealthy amount.

“She’s good.” He shrugged and casually stirred his coffee, the metal of his spoon dinging against the ceramic center of his mug.

He didn’t bother to tell Eliot she missed him. Eliot could always tell when he was lying.

“Do you want to tell me what that was about?” He asked. Eliot’s skin flushed against his neck and up into his cheeks.

“Not really,” he muttered, sipping his coffee because he wanted to stop his mouth from betraying him and spilling every little dark butterfly of nerves out.

“Is it school?” Spencer guessed anyway. “Friends? A…. a…”

“A boyfriend?” Eliot filled in for him because he doubted Spencer was going to be able to do so on his own. This time he did succeed in spitting out some of the acid that had curled up inside him and it still didn’t make him feel any better.

“You have a boyfriend?” For some reason, Spencer almost looked hopeful. He wasn’t allowed to look hopeful.

“No.” Eliot gritted out from between his teeth. The look on Spencer’s face dashed away. His hand curled in front of his mouth, thumb plucking at his oversized upper lip. It was a habit he’d had for forever and Ian would make fun of him for it for days.

“You can make those pouty lips plump all you want, Spence,” he would say. “I’m still going to be the pretty one.”

Spencer caught himself and coughed, covering his slip by scratching along the dark stubble of his jawline.

“Well,” Spencer stumbled over. “How… how is school?”

Eliot snorted before he stop himself. Of anyone to ask about school, Spencer would be the lowest person on the list. He’d be a post it note lost in the bottom of the bag. Spencer spent more time ditching to go out and smoke with his flavor of the week than he actually did in a classroom.

“School is fine...magical even.” He quipped. Not for the first time, Eliot considered bolting for Brakebills. Spencer waited for more with his mouth slightly gaping and his eyebrows lost in his dark spiky mess of hair. What was he expecting? It’s not like Eliot could explain the complexity of popper’s thirty seven while the moon was in eclipse on a winter day with him. For all Eliot knew, Spencer didn’t even know what Eliot was “studying”. His family only knew he’d gone to grad school because Fogg had sent the letter explaining the whole cover story even after Eliot had told him not to bother.

“Well…. Good.” Spencer’s hand traveled from his jaw to the base of his scalp, grimacing at his own hypocrisy. “That’s good. You always were the one that could pick up that stuff the fastest. Everything, actually. The rest of us could barely keep up.”

“How are they?” Eliot asked in spite of himself and he hated how his voice sounded small in his attempts to sound aloof.

“They’re good. Arlan got reelected for sheriff again and he and Sherry are trying for a baby… and Ian’s back for good this time, so he’s finishing up his law degree.” Spencer leveled his gaze onto Eliot as he took another long sip of his coffee. “They worry about you, you know.”

Eliot’s eyes went skywards, searching to find some anger to burn out the resentment. It was a losing battle. “I’m sure they do.”

“C’mon,” Spencer chastised. “You know they do.”

“Well, they do a great job of showing it.” He hissed. He pushed his mug away with a powerful twitch of his wrist, ignoring the coffee that spilled out onto the table top.

“It’s complicated.” When Spencer let out a long stream of hot air from between his lips it aged him and Eliot was forced to remember that Spencer was now in his thirties and Eliot wasn’t the same little kid anymore.

“You know what? I don’t have to or want to listen to this.” He was an adult who had made his own life. “So, good to see you again. Ta.”

“What really happened to you?” Spencer asked. Eliot rocked to his heels, half way out of the booth. Spencer was staring at Eliot with that hard patience that could pierce through anyone. It was part of the dark intensity that had people flock to him. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve known you since you were born.”

“You don’t know anything about me anymore.” No one did. Even Margo was kept in the dark from Eliot’s deepest black shadows that Mike--- The Beast--- had unearthed.

“I know that you’re practically a walking open wound who’s trying to drown his problems with booze. I know that whatever happened ripped you apart on the inside.”

“And how exactly would you know that?” Eliot scoffed.

“Because you have the same expression on your face you did after your first kiss.” And suddenly, Eliot was feeling small all over again. He refused to look at Spencer but his brother tried anyway. “The only difference is it’s more adult.”

Eliot shivered at the memory, his mind too overwrought with a raw mix of emotions he was so desperately trying to control. His first kiss had embarrassingly been when he’d been thirteen with Reggie Stratford at an old abandoned tree house in the woods. Reggie had befriended Eliot and Eliot, who couldn’t identify his quick attachment issues at that age, had promptly fallen madly in love with him. Reggie had taken Eliot out to the tree house, sweet talked him until Eliot didn’t know what else to do but kiss him. Reggie had then pulled away to laugh in Eliot’s face and left him there. Arlan and Ian had to come find Eliot with flashlights.

Finding out that he’d been a pawn in the Beast’s plans had somehow surpassed the shame from that night.

Spencer pushed Eliot back his cup of coffee with the back of his knuckles.

 “So, what happened?”

Eliot had to swallow a few more times, his throat suspiciously dry. “I… I met someone…”

“A boyfriend.” This time when Spencer said it his voice was steady and certain.

“Maybe.” He’d certainly called Mike his boyfriend. At the time it’d sort of bothered him that Mike hadn’t said the same but had simply assumed that it’d been all part of Mike’s quiet charm.

Oh, how stupid were the smitten.

“Ok?” Spencer prompted.

Who the hell cares? Eliot was just going to wipe Spencer’s memory when he couldn’t stand this conversation anymore. Not yet though. Bitterness may curl around Eliot’s heart in terms of his brothers but there was still some sense of comfort he couldn’t resist when he was around them.

He’d forgotten what that comfort had felt like.

“He’s dead. Because of me. He… he had this whole beautiful life and then he met me and two weeks later he was dead.” Miraculously, Eliot’s voice held the flat tone he had been striving for. He glanced at Spencer from the side, trying to decide if this was the point where he would give up. 

“Jesus.” Spencer breathed.

“So, no. I’m not really great but I’m managing.” Without looking Eliot swallowed the rest of his coffee and let the liquid warm all the way down through his chest.

Spencer for his part seemed to be digesting the revelation fairly well considering. He didn’t ask Eliot how Mike died for which Eliot was eternally grateful. Despite all given appearance he would actually prefer to not use magic on his brother. He searched for his flask in his suit pocket and fingered the lid.

Spencer grabbed the back of his neck again and winced. “Look, I know it’s been a while. It’s been years but you could’ve called… Any of one of us and we would’ve been on the first bus up here.”

Eliot snorted into his flask, taking a long gulp and settling in the alcohol induced burn that consumed the taste of coffee on his tongue. “You mean call the brothers who pity me and think I’m lost, yeah I think I’ll pass.”

“That doesn’t mean we don’t love you,” Spencer said, eying the flask worryingly.

“The five year gap would say otherwise.”

“C’mon,” Spencer frowned. “Don’t put that on me. You didn’t reach out either.”

“I shouldn’t have had to.” Something wounded and hurt cut across Spencer’s face and Eliot couldn’t decide if he was happy or upset about that. So, he took another drink instead. “I’m sure it made Dad happy anyway.”

“Since when do you care what that drunk thinks?” Spencer asked. Eliot jingled his flask at his brother before tucking it back into his pocket for safe keeping. Spencer seemed to take the time to formulate some kind of response to the overload of emotions and revelations he probably didn’t wake up that morning expecting.

“Look,” he said, his voice rough even in it’s softness. “I don’t know what happened with this guy and I don’t know what’s been happening with you for the past five years. And you’re right… I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you have been able to survive a life like this. When you were younger, we thought it was just a phase and then… an obsessive need to be rebellious.”

The coffee soured in Eliot’s stomach. “Yes, because not being the same cookie cut out like the rest of you was my teenage act of rebellion.”

“When have I ever been cookie cutter?” Spencer’s smirk had Eliot’s twitch in spite of himself. While Arlan had taught Eliot how to shave and Ian's stressful dramatics at Eliot's attempt to learn how to drive, Spencer had showed Eliot how to punch. Apart from Eliot, Spencer was as far as the black sheep as his family could possibly get.

“When you weren’t going to let this go, you’re right, I couldn’t accept that you were going to have a hard time for the rest of your life and... I didn't understand why you couldn't just blend in.”

Hot pressure built up behind Eliot’s eyes and he stared firmly at the table top in front of him. He nearly broke when Spencer’s hand curled around the back of Eliot’s neck, pulling him down until Spencer could press his forehead against Eliot’s temple. “But you are my baby brother and I love you. And if I ever hear that you go through something like that and you don’t call me… I’m going to come up here and kick your ass and then kick whoever is to blame’s ass too.”

He let go of Eliot and waited until he met his gaze. “You are better than Dad, Eliot. You are better than whatever that fucking awful town expected from you. You are better. Do you understand me?”

“What if I’m not?” Eliot asked. What if he wasn’t? Hearing Spencer--- seeing Spencer--- say all those things were enough in the moment but Eliot couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t fall into a pit again. Eliot had ripped a hole for Mike to fit in deep in his soul and now Eliot was left with nothing but a self inflected wound that festered with each coherent thought. He couldn’t promise that he could ever be better. He couldn’t even promise that he could live long enough prove Spencer right. Existing was a lot easier than sustaining.

“For someone who is always so sensitive you have such a hard time actually feeling.” Spencer mused, extending a hand out until Eliot pulled out his flask again. He took a hard drink and grimaced at the taste, a flicker of pride in his eye at Eliot’s choice. “Life isn’t fair.  You know that more than anyone and it’s important that you remember that.”

He took another sip and recoiled, giving up on the booze for his coffee instead.

“But you will always have me.”

Later, under the influence of a probability spell, while Eliot was slowly dying, he would remember the smell of gasoline, leather and cinnamon.  


End file.
